For the point I'm making, the the rest of the players as well as the total games played of the top-15 don't really matter.
Forget that one group played less games than the other. They both produced the same amount of goals and points per game, so the overall offensive production was similar, but Hitch's top-15 were +363 to the Flames' -161. The average shots per game for the top-15 players from the Blues was 2.02, while for the Flames it was 1.91. The Blues' top-15 had a collective 60% success rate on the power play, while the flames were at 50% (again, in spite of averaging the same amount of total goals per game between the two groups of 15).
I guess what I'm saying is that Hitchcock got more of the systems-based, coachable stats out his top-15 players than we got out of ours. When you consider they both produced the same level of overall offence, meaning they both had the same level of collective ability, the only conclusion I can see is that Hitch established better systems and was more successful at getting his best 15 players to buy in than any of our coaches did and were.
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